News, ideas and a software CEO's thoughts from 25 years in the industry.

The Many Benefits of Paperless Invoicing in Microsoft Dynamics NAV

The world of accounting and ERP has been moving for several years to an increasingly paperless realm. Going from paper to digital maximizes efficiency and organization while dramatically reducing costs for both customers and the companies who supply them. Besides the intrinsic benefits of ‘going green,’ not having to send invoices to clients (or purchase orders, sales orders, confirmations, and so on) has the potential to save a couple of dollars per transaction, minimum — times, of course, the hundreds of such transactions each day/week/month that a company typically performs.

The challenge, as pointed out by Equisys, a firm specializing in digital/paperless solutions with their product known as Zetadocs, is to preserve the familiarity associated with the manual paper process and utilize technology that yields higher profitability, efficiency and reliability. Their product, as we have found, provides a solution that can merge that familiarity of processing with the significant benefits of electronic invoicing.

The product uses automated settings defined by users to capture and store both inbound and outbound documents, captured in a non-disruptive way alongside software already being implemented. [By way of disclaimer, we sell and support this product (as well as other paperless solutions), and appreciate its benefits.] Documents can be created, sent and archived, in groups or individually. They’re sent the way customers want them, via email, fax or print.

Products like Zetadocs permit administrators to preset company settings such as logos and conditions of sale, so ‘best practices’ and company procedures are always followed. Duplicate copies can be created and stored if desired, and users can preview the batch of documents and make changes to the final document before sending it, or add additional information if desired, like a personalized message or an alternate email address.

Later, of course, documents can be retrieved electronically, and sophisticated searches can also be performed. Since industry studies have shown that up to 30% (!) of an employee’s working day can be spent just looking for needed data, the cost benefits become quickly apparent. By reducing time spent searching for documents, companies can improve employee productivity by up to one-third.

Meanwhile, research firm Gartner recently estimated that between 1% and 3% of a company’s total annual revenue is consumed by such time-consuming production activities as processing and mailing invoices and purchase orders (IDC, another leading research firm, put the figure even higher, at 5%). These savings are not insignificant.

The takeaway is easy: reducing the overhead cost of paper invoices and utilizing employee time more efficiently are important to a firm’s productivity. Better still, these solutions are within reach.

Best of all… the basic version of Zetadocs is free to Microsoft Dynamics NAV users. More robust versions with greater capabilities are also available for modest upgrade costs. If you’re not going paperless in today’s business world, you are leaking major dollars. We’ve found the solutions (and there are many) to be quick to implement, inexpensive, and can save companies dollars from day one. The next step is up to you…